


when the ritual begins

by tsunderestorm



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Anal Sex, M/M, Masturbation, Ritual Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-18 10:48:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13680153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tsunderestorm/pseuds/tsunderestorm
Summary: The Accursed, they call him. Sin Eater. Scourge Bringer. Lord of Daemons.Ardyn, Noctis calls him, for he’s read the faded letters beneath the statue, heard the ancient legends whispered between hands when the priests think he’s too empty-headed and apathetic to listen.Noctis pays homage to the divine benefactor of the temple.





	when the ritual begins

**Author's Note:**

> _No masters or kings when the ritual begins  
>  There is no sweeter innocence than our gentle sin_
> 
> This is a really self-indulgent little bit of porn for the idea that I’ve just been referring to the “temple virgin Noct AU”. I hope someone enjoys it even half as much as me.

At five, the Crystal chooses Noctis. Insomnia is flourishing, _thriving_ as it has for some years now, unintimidated by the proverbial dark clouds hovering lower and lower still, scraping the tops of their grand skyscrapers, their homes and temples. He is the final piece of a prophecy two-thousand years in the making, the helpless hare in a trap he is pushed into. He is to live in the city’s most opulent temple, to be bound to the entity they all fear. Soon to be husband, later a lover, always a _pawn_.

The monster could destroy them all. He could topple civilizations, bring kings to their knees the way he had two millennia ago the way the legends say he’d nearly brought his brother. The legends all told of a gift, an offering to be made, one with no blades or spilled blood but one of the flesh, a comfort and companion for a touch-starved monster rather than a demonstration of devoutness by death.

Betrothed, they say, _promised_. Cursed, the people hiss, whispering _there but for the grace of the gods go I_ as he passes them by, hand in hand with Regis. _Such a pity_ , they tell him. _For such a bright, beautiful child to be given to a duty like that._

At thirteen Noctis promises to hold back the dark, gives his god-husband his devotion in a ceremony that binds them forever. When he is nineteen, he gives the Accursed his body in a ritual thousands of years in the making. The temple is old, crumbling at the corners, more hastily constructed than the statues of the Old Wall surrounding Insomnia. The stone is darker, too - a deep red that seems to swallow up any bit of light that enters through the door, seems to surround him. Intended protective, maybe, but only possessive.

Through a haze of sandalwood incense he sees the temple’s prized possession: a life-size statue of the Accursed on the altar, posed seated in a way that eerily mimics the ancestral throne his father sits. Between its legs, a perfectly-crafted cock jutting up proudly, there for the taking. The polished marble shines as the firelight casts flickering shadows over it, calling him forth, beckoning him.

(“So you’ve gotta, you know, on the _statue_?” he remembers Prompto asking, wide-eyed and incredulous. “That’s crazy!”)

 _Crazy,_ Noctis thinks. The memory is a none-too-subtle reminder of what he must do. Quietly, privately, he thinks of it as what he _wants_ to do. He’s not supposed to like it, not supposed to _want_ it. He is Atonement, they tell him, a pretty title. The Astral-blessed Crystal’s way of apologizing to the creature their negligence had created, the corruption they’d made him eat until his own soul was devoured. He is supposed to bear this weight in silence, in pious devotion but certainly no amount of indulgence. Which is precisely _why_ he’s going to indulge.

Ever-virginal, he can never let anyone _truly_ touch him; sacrificial, he will never be untouched again.

—

When he is twenty, he is _hungry_. The ritual is no longer a chore but a pleasure, the feel of the oil slick on his fingers and dripping out of his fucked-open hole is a familiar one, an _exquisite_ one. If he has to be a dutiful, pious husband and a wet, accessible hole for the Accursed then he might as well enjoy it, might as well get what use he can out of the shining marble statue and its _always_ -erect cock. Might as well spend his days in _worship_ , might as well indulge in the sweet burn of the statue’s cock stretching him wide.

The oil is slow-moving and luxurious, invading his palate with its heady fragrance as he scoops it from the black-lacquer pot and onto his fingers. Fascinated, he watches it drip down and shimmer in the low light of the braziers around the statue as he drags his hand down his body: warm chest, hardening nipples, soft stomach and the growing hardness of his cock between his legs. He can feel the eyes of the statue on him, feel its gaze accusingly: you shouldn’t be doing this, it says.

_Watch me._

He knows other people get to have normal relationships. Lovers, sweethearts, husbands, but not him. Still, he tries to touch the image of his god in a way he imagines he might touch a lover - slow, sensual, in the way that Prompto has talked about on the rare occasions he’s allowed in the temple to see him. A longing glance here, a touch there. _Flirting,_ Prompto calls it.

He’s felt every inch of the god statue’s form: the shapely calves and muscular thighs against his throne, the sculpted cut of his hips, the nipples his fingers always catch on and the finely-carved hair spread across his chest. His handsome face; the cut of his jaw, the slope of his brow, the few wrinkles carved at the corners of his mouth and his eyes. The cock he’s so enamored with, always ready for him when he’s ready for _it._

His hand barely fits around the marble phallus, thick as it is, and the material should feel cold as always in his palm but it's the opposite. Warm, almost _alive_ with a sort of strange energy, sending a jolt through him. There’s an energy in the air, a crackle of electric power in the sudden storm that’s sprung to life outside that makes Noctis feel powerful. It seems like the magic he’s read legends about is still _there_ somewhere, pulsing in his soul like it had hundreds of years ago, like the statue has some sort of _life force_ that awakens only when he touches it.

Shaking his head, he banishes that thought with a laugh. His father’s advisors, the priests and historians, would no doubt say that makes him _pious._ Less the ungrateful, lazy child they’ve defined him as since, gods _forbid,_ he wasn’t tripping over himself at the idea of a life in solitude with only the _idea_ of a demigod who maybe never even existed as company and more devoted and dutiful, eager to let the feel of his beloved “husband” comfort and flow into him.

He’ll have something in him, that’s for sure. The storm outside is fierce and no one is coming. No one will invade his private space to bring the Lord of Daemons treats or offerings, to bring the Lord’s husband gifts of more oil or sumptuous fabrics to drape himself in. No one will interrupt this _sacrilege,_ this pure carnal enjoyment he plans to take from the Accursed.

Spurred on by the confidence of solitude, he begins with a whisper of _“_ My husband…” He thumbs over the thick head of the statue’s cock, stroking down to the base where it’s thicker, the place he’s spent many a night with his thighs nestled against as he’s filled. _Ardyn_ , he thinks as his fingers trail over the smooth shape of his balls, heavy beneath his cock and just out of reach. He wants to hold him in his hands, wants to touch him as he’d touch a real person.

 _The Accursed,_ they call him. Sin Eater. Scourge Bringer. Lord of Daemons. _Ardyn_ , Noctis calls him, for he’s read the faded letters beneath the statue, heard the ancient legends whispered between hands when the priests think he’s too empty-headed and apathetic to listen. He was first a healer, once beautiful and pure like him, once chosen by the Crystal when the honor was a blessing and not a curse. The legends speak of a betrayal, of a power-hungry brother and a scorned king, provide a method to the madness that was the fall from grace the tales speak of.

He blushes as he twists his hand up and down the statue’s cock, coating it with the perfumed oil, slicking it up to make it easier to take. He’s used to it by now, of course, but it’s no small feat, thick and rigid as it is. He likes the feel of it in his hand, hard and heavy against his oiled palm and he climbs into its lap, straddling the statue’s knee as he ruts down against it. He imagines he’s on a lozer’s lap, in unfamiliar territory play-acting with the temple’s divine benefactor, inexperienced but _desperate_.

“Ardyn…” he whispers, testing how the name tastes on his tongue. It tastes sweet, syrupy, makes his entire body ache with some sort of powerful pleasure. He raises up to press back against the statue’s cock, chest to chest with the statue and _gods,_ Ardyn is so big, so much bigger than him. That thought excites him, makes his cock jerk as he reaches back to circle his oil-slick fingers around his hole, dares to slip them inside. The statue’s lap cradles him, the hard marble of its cock pins him between it and the muscular belly as he rides his fingers, working himself open as he tips his head back and moans. “Ardyn, _please_ -“

“Tell me,” a voice drawls from the doorway at the same time a thunderclap shakes the temple. “Do you always make such a show of your ritual?”

Noctis snaps back to reality so fast his head spins, bolting up and hopping off the statue’s lap, grabbing his loose clothes from where he’d discarded them on the floor to clutch them in front of him. It’s sacrilege, he knows, to see the Accursed’s husband in any state of undress, to let the monster think for one second that his gift wasn’t fully _his._ On top of that he doesn’t recognize this man; his violet hair and amber eyes don’t seem at all like they belong to any of the people who have brought offerings to his temple, _their_ temple. The strangest part of it all is that he’s...entirely unaffected by the storm outside. Because he’s completely dry there seems to be something special about him, about his energy. He’s powerful, _dangerous_ and Noctis is equal parts terrified and fascinated.

The stranger crosses the room in a few long strides, approaching the altar and its statue with no hint of reverence and only a mild sense of curiosity. Noctis scurries away with an indignant yelp, darting naked into the center of the room behind a brazier to avoid him. Crouching down next to the statue, the stranger looks it over, eyes trailing over its curves and angles and quirking an eyebrow when his eyes pass over its cock. When he’s finished appraising it he turns to Noct, tilting his head back and laughing as he looks him over.

“Not a bad likeness, don’t you think?” he asks as he leans down level with the statue. “They got the nose wrong, of course, but what can you expect when they’re terrified you’ll unleash an unholy horde of daemons on them? Not that I would _ever_ , of course.”

Noctis blinks at him blearily. His cock is going soft against his thigh, acutely aware of the fact that whatever mood was there is _not_ coming back because he’s so...thrown off. Slowly, curiously, he looks up at this mysterious stranger. He shouldn’t _be_ here, shouldn’t be standing in the doorway of the inner sanctum of a sacred temple, shouldn’t be committing _sacrilege_ by even seeing Noctis half-nude and in such a state but he _is_ and the strangest part is that he doesn’t seem to _care_.

“What’s wrong, pet...? Don’t you want to pay homage to your god?” the stranger asks, walking towards Noctis, arms outstretched, _strutting_ , absolutely on display. Noctis’ eyes trail down to the erection straining against the front of his green trousers, the thick line of it down the leg of them and for a moment, that feeling of terror and fascination is back, cock jerking in faint interest. _He can’t_ , _even if he wants to_.

Then he looks up and sees him, really _sees_ him: the wide mouth with the corners that form a smirk even when he’s resting, the handsome jaw, the broad shoulders and strong chest. The same dark, foreboding power he senses from the ages-old statue of the monster he’s been wedded to and in a way, bedded by.

“Ardyn…?” Noctis asks quietly, hesitantly, hand loosening its white-knuckle hold on his robes as he stares open-mouthed, disbelieving, in awe of the man before him, _towering_ over him.

“Now, _that’s_ the way. Tell me, though...how did you know my name?” Ardyn asks, catching Noctis’ chin in his fingertips and turning his face this way and that in the low light. Looking him over, judging his worth. “Such a pretty thing to use such a familiar title...but still, no one has used that name in two millennia. They’re all scared to, you see! Names have _power_.”

Seemingly guided by some preternatural force, Noctis reaches out a shaky hand and slides it up Ardyn’s leg to feel the finely honed muscle under his fingertips, to hear him moan his appreciation and say “And you, pretty husband, have a great deal of power, it seems. Enough to have me in the palm of your hand!”

This man, this _god_ of sorts is real, he’s flesh and blood (or _something_ ) and Noctis’ hand travels upwards until the flesh beneath them is hot and hard, until his fingertips are finding the hard line of his cock and squeezing experimentally. It matches his own, newly hard with renewed interest and barely obscured by the robes he still has bunched against him. It feels different than he’s imagined, this first cock he’s touched beside his own: bigger, thicker, searing hot to the touch even through the thick fabric.

“Literally, it seems.” Ardyn adds quietly, privately, like he’s whispering a secret. “My, my, how dutiful…”

“Why are you here?” Noctis asks, fingertips still curiously caressing his cock through the fabric. What he means is why _now_ , why _tonight_ , why when a storm rages outside has the very monster the Crystal has bade him to keep at bay arrived to stand before him? Ardyn rests his hands on his hips to pull back the elaborate coat he wears and shifts his weight, hips jutted forward as he presses his cock into Noctis’ touch. Noctis lets his bunched-up clothes fall away as he brings his other hand to feel up Ardyn’s body, slipping up beneath the vests he wears to feel his stomach: smooth dark hair against firm skin in a way that makes him shudder.

“How _rude_ , honestly! You called to me, Noct...sweet pet, didn’t you realize?” Ardyn ruffles Noctis’ hair as he leers down at him, lips curled into a lascivious smirk as he lets Noctis’ naive fingers play across the bulge of his cock.

He lets Noctis play for a bit before he turns on his heel and climbs the few short steps to the altar to sit down, legs spread obscenely wide as he looks Noctis over. The temple’s little jewel is sitting back on his heels with his eager little cock desperately hard between his legs, his sweet nipples dark and flushed against his perfect chest, lips parted into a perfect pout that Ardyn can already imagine slipping his cock between. Oh, but the Astrals have given him the prettiest present.

“It seems a cold, make-believe statue isn’t enough to satisfy my little husband, is it? You want something _real_.”

His voice sends shivers down Noctis’ spine. It’s smooth, velvety, finer than the softest fabric and it feels just as good washing over his body. Ardyn’s not _wrong_ , Noctis thinks, right in the sense that the statue, the ritual _isn’t_ enough for him. Right that even though he’s supposed to be pure and virginal even as he’s working himself on a centuries-old statue’s cock he _wants more_. He wants _heat_ and _passion_ and everything that’s been denied to him, wants to rebel in some way against the destiny that was chosen for him at the age of five, against his role as a sacrificial offering to a creature that once threatened all of humanity. Husband and king to the lord of all that is dark and unholy.

Maybe, he thinks, as he considers Ardyn’s inviting posture and the storm raging outside, he can kill two birds with one stone.

He moves again towards Ardyn without thinking and _crawls_ on hands and knees. Behind him he leaves all thoughts of words like _sacrilege_ , leaves all images of his father’s disappointed face in favor of Ardyn the Accursed looking down at him from his perch on high, cock throbbing against the front of his pants. Seated beside his statue, relaxed in contrast to its formal posture he watches, a hand on his thigh and the other crooning a finger saying _come here_. With eyes like embers, he looks ethereal, forbidden, tempting _-_ a gaze that _burns_ as Noctis feels it caress every inch of his body. He wants more.

“The king made to kneel,” Ardyn coos, hand moving to give his cock a slow, greedy squeeze, tilting his head back with a groan before his eyes fixate on Noctis again. “‘In pain, he crawls…’ tell me, Noct, are you in pain? Are you positively _aching_?”

Noctis climbs to his feet coltish and clumsy as he reaches the foot of the stairs, ascending them only to drop to his knees again. Ardyn undoes the button on his pants and drags them down enough to draw his cock out: it’s flushed dark, shining at the tip and Noctis licks his lips at the sight, this flesh and blood body that he craves so badly. His throat is dry, his lips chapped from biting and every inch of his skin is flushed. Each rain-chilled breeze that weaves its way through the temple makes him shudder, makes his cock leak down his thigh and onto the stone floor beneath his knees. He _is_ aching.

“Come now, little husband,” Ardyn drawls. “I’ve waited two millennia for you. I’ve sent daemons unto villages, poured their blood into wells as poison and left their rotting bones on gravestones, _curses_ sent as reminders to gods who did nothing for me. The astrals promised me that one day they would atone. So come here and _atone_.”

He drags Noctis into his lap without hesitation, pulls him frail back to broad chest, lays his cock against the webbing of scars the daemon’s attack had left on his back a decade prior and shudders. Noctis wonders if Ardyn can feel it, this barely-contained curse that one of _his_ progeny gave him, wonders now if it was _intentional,_ the first mark of many.

“Baby child, you’ve been mine since before you broke in that delicate body on my statue. Isn’t that _delightful_?”

It _is_ and it _isn't,_ the worst blend of lust and loathing Noctis has ever felt. He hates the Accursed, the things he’s done and the legacy he’s left but _gods_ , he wants him. Like he’s supposed to, like he’s not supposed to. He wants to say _I hate you_ but it comes out wrong, comes out: “According to the Crystal I’ve been yours since before I was born.”

“So _bright,_ Noct…” Ardyn praises as his big hands explore Noctis’ body like he owns it, as his fingers reach between them to slip inside his wet hole and _curl_. “It’s good to know one’s place.”

It’s different than the statue, Noctis thinks through of a haze of pure, blinding pleasure. It’s _real_ and _hot_ , something even the warmth of his skin could never truly make the marble become and even just Ardyn’s fingers sink into him in an entirely different way, stretching him wide, bumping against spots inside of him that the statue could never reach. He can only imagine how it’s going to feel when his fingers are replaced by his cock, can only imagine the heavy girth that rests against his back splitting him open. Shivering, he bucks back against the touch, the feel of him - big, sturdy, hard _everywhere -_ and moans, shameless and unrestrained. What was woken has been stoked, fanned by the heat of Ardyn’s fingertips, the hellfire in his heart.

“This isn’t the first time I’ve felt you, of course,” Ardyn purrs in his ear, beard scratching his neck as he nuzzles into it. “Every time you’ve sunken onto my statue, every time you’ve let the symbolic embodiment of me fill up your insides I’ve _felt you_ and every time you’ve clutched tight around me when you reach that exquisite peak I’ve _known you._ ”

Noctis spreads his legs wider, the powerful purr of Ardyn’s voice making them fall open easily. Ardyn’s free hand hand envelops his cock easily, makes it seem tiny in the grip of his big hands and Ardyn groans “Yes, _yes_ , _this_ is how you appease me, this is how you make the centuries of agony worthwhile, this is how you make a monster _human again_.” Ardyn has no end of praise, an endless string of compliments that fill Noctis’ mind and make him lightheaded, tear the air from his lungs when Ardyn slicks up his cock and presses inside.

Ardyn’s fingertips clutch around his cock, a dramatic flick of his wrist tugs a bead of precum from the head and he’s moaning as Ardyn jerks him in time with his thrusts, as his powerful hips are plunging his cock deeper inside of him. Somehow Ardyn feels even _bigger_ like this and Noctis swears he can feel it in his belly, feels like it’s going to burst out of him in a way that he never felt even on the statue, even on the times when he ached for days after taking it too deep because he just couldn’t get _enough._ This is enough, more than enough, _too much_ but he asks for more. Wants it, needs it, craves it, digs his fingers into Ardyn’s hairy forearms clutched around him as he rises and falls with the movements of Ardyn’s hips.

“It’s different like this, though,” Ardyn says, mouth hot on Noctis’ neck, peppering the flushed skin with bite marks as he talks and punctuating each word with the indent of his teeth. “It’s been two thousand years since I _felt_ someone like this, I had forgotten how it felt to sink into a tight body, to fuck and _feel_ \- “ He’s practically growling as he does it, making Noctis cry out with every bite of his teeth, every thrust of his cock deep inside of him.

“Such a dutiful husband,” Ardyn purrs, pressing kisses to Noctis’ temple, to his sweat-damp hair as he strokes his hands up and down his thighs, delighting in the way he shivers before he squeezes his balls, rolling them in his grasp as he pistons his hips into him. “Call me by my name again, Noctis. I need to hear you _say it_.”

“Ardyn, Ardyn, _Ardyn,”_ Noctis pants as Ardyn’s dick slams into him again and again, gasping as the breath is stolen from his lungs with each powerful thrust. The name slips out before he can think, called forth by the sheer power Ardyn emanates. It’s a remnant of the ceremony the priests had conducted when he was young, _too young_ to be wed to a divine daemon but moving through the motions nonetheless but now it’s so much _more._ They name different on his tongue than the titles had. _Ardyn_ is more powerful and heavy even than the title of _husband_ he’d uttered when they were bound.

“ _Yes_ , Noct, there it is,” Ardyn groans when Noctis gasps it out, when he calls him by his name, his _real_ name and not his title. Not the Accursed, by the proverbial _He_ , not _that monster_ , just _Ardyn_ in a voice so passionate it’s worthy of speaking it. It shakes Ardyn to his core, reminds him of a time before the Astrals left him for dead, before his brother banished and broke him and the scourge made a home of his body, before they deified him to make a monster of him.

 _What a sweet victory_ , Ardyn thinks as Noctis comes clenched tight around him. _What divine recompense._ What blissful euphoria to feel him, well and truly _feel him_ come undone on hot flesh instead of unfeeling marble, to hear his voice raggedly whimpering his _name._

_—_

“I suppose I can promise at least a _few_ more years of peace for your pretty twinkling Insomnia,” Ardyn says as he rubs his hand over Noctis’ belly spattered with little husband’s own cum, nuzzling against his neck and nipping at the flushed skin. “Seeing as you made this _poor, lonesome,_ old god feel human again on this most _dreadful_ of stormy nights…”

Noctis wriggles around, feeling Ardyn’s cock twitch inside of him, still half-hard and doubtless able to go again. He wants that, _wants_ him to go again. “You’re only gonna not destroy my kingdom because you fucked me?”

“Well sweetheart, isn’t that what I’ve been doing all along?” Ardyn laughs as his hand slides down Noctis’ belly, fingers spreading to come back together curled around his cock, urging him into hardness once more.“A taste of your ass a day keeps the daemons at bay, isn’t that right?”

**Author's Note:**

> I am [tsunderestorm](twitter.com/tsunderestorm) on twitter if you want to chat. ♥


End file.
